Who is proofreading before you publish the recipes?

I do not believe you are reading your recipes before you copy them. Two of the four at which I looked told me to go to some obscure page number for more directions...are you really reading what you are putting online? I went to another recipe because I did not wish to have to go out to buy the cookbook to make the particular recipe.
Also, the pages look like they are not complete...

I'm so sorry you have encountered recipes with page numbers for more directions. We do proofread every recipe twice -- but clearly we messed up here and I'm really sorry. I know how aggravating that is. We aim to make sure that all linked recipes are truly linked -- and aim to remove all extraneous cross-references that appeared in the recipes in their original book form.

Can I trouble you to let me know, if you remember, which recipes had this problem? Or even just the category or type or author or an ingredient -- we can then go through and check each one.

As for the pages not looking complete -- I'm thinking that maybe some recipes slipped over from our proofreading queue to the "published queue" which may explain the cross-references and lack of completeness. So it really would be enormously helpful if you were willing to let us know which those might be.

I am so grateful to you for writing us. Please do stick with us! We really appreciate your support.

After I made the sponge, let it rise at room temperature for 1 hour, and refrigerated it for 8 hrs., the mixture was watery. I added the additional flour as instructed, but it was far too watery to knead.

There was indeed an error in Nick Malgieri's Baguette recipe. Instead of 2 teaspoons of dry yeast for the sponge the recipe should have read 1/2 teaspoon, and instead of 1/2 cup flour the recipe should have read 1 1/2 cups flour. As Will said in response to Lutie's question above, we try our best to make sure that these types of errors don't occur; occasionally, however, they do. I'm sorry that your Baguette efforts were thwarted by our mistake. I do hope that you'll continue to use the site, and of course please continue to alert us to problems or errors that you find, as we're always trying to improve.

Thanks so much for writing, John. And our apologies -- we will have this fixed within the hour.

This is really frustrating for us -- we hate having typos. We are looking at our systems again to see if there is more we can do. I'm sure there is. And you are right, too, that we need to be even more diligent about recipes we post to the Facebook page.

That said, we've only had a small number of typos slip through in the fifteen months since our launch, and we are incredibly grateful to Cookstr users like yourself and Gladys for pointing out errors and typos when you find them. Still, we believe it's not acceptable to have any errors at all. We are putting lots of great new recipes up on the site; I think in our enthusiasm and eagerness to get them up quickly we may have moved a bit too fast!

Thanks for alerting us to the missing ingredient in Elizabeth Terry's recipe for Shrimp Belvedere. That recipe has been updated, and now includes two bay leaves in its list of ingredients. As Will mentioned above, we hate having typos or errors in our recipes, and we do our best to proofread every recipe twice before it goes live. That said, sometimes mistakes do slip through the cracks. We really appreciate you pointing out the error, and hope that you'll continue to use the site and alert us to problems or errors that you find, as we're always trying to improve.

I just made the recipe for Spicy Stir-Fried Squid. It was delicious, but it certainly involves guess-work. Nothing is said about how to slice, dice, or chop either the onion or the bell pepper. And, once the sauce has been made and "set aside," it's never referred to again? So, I too ask, "Does anybody really read these recipes before they're posted"?

Well based on what we have experienced, it is an ongoing problem and they seem to not say anything about what or how they are going to fix it. As editor and founder, I would offer more detail, now we know what a mess this has been. Maybe tell us briefly how the editing process work so we know they are trying.

I dont know, perhaps maybe allowing a certain number of online volunteers to proofread with opportunitiy for some perk. I mean come on, get creative Cookstr!!

Thanks for writing in, John T., about the Spicy Stir-Fried Squid. We are committed to publishing recipes exactly as they are written. Some authors have more minimal style than othersr. We will contact the author and get her suggestion for how to chop the onion and the bell pepper and update the recipe. Again, many thanks for writing!

As for proofreading, John I, we do proofread very carefully. We are bringing to the internet recipes from books, which, for the most part, have never been online before. Since there are no electronic files for most of these recipes, we need to have them typed anew. They are "double keystroke entered," which means that two separate people type the same recipe and a computer then compares the two versions. (This minimizes errors because people don't usually make the same typos). And then they are, indeed, all proofread twice. We've made available thousands of recipes for free -- and are incredibly grateful to our wonderful users of Cookstr who have pointed out to us the instances where typos have slipped through (or where, in fact, they existed in the original recipe). And we almost always correct those within a few hours.

We don't think it's a mess at all! We have far fewer typos than most other recipe websites. And as for perks, we hope that the knowledge that you are helping your fellow Cookstr users (and earning our gratitude!) will be enough to keep you and our other wonderful and enthusiastic Cookstr users pointing out typos if and when they find them (or places where more instruction is needed). Of course, we don't want any typos at all. So that makes us even more grateful when they are pointed out. But, again, we have only found a few dozen since we launched -- if that!

I should also point out how proud we are to use Get Satisfaction. Unlike many other sites, we make public all the feedback we get.

Again, thanks for writing! And I'm will@cookstr.com if you want to help brainstorm or just chat.

I am reading all these assurances, months old, that recipes are proofread, but I am still seeing a LOT of typos and errors in recipes. I really do not believe that Marian Cunningham, with her huge body of thoroughly-tested recipes, is the one making the errors. Two out of three recipes I have tried had errors - one of which required me to clean the inside of my whole oven. Come on, Cookstr - cooking is chemistry, and the details COUNT. You are making the professional cooks look bad.

Thanks for writing. We do proofread our recipes, and very few errors make it through the process and onto the site. But we remain grateful to our visitors for pointing out any errors that they do encounter. Sometimes these are indeed errors that were in the original book. Most published books have a few typos in them. We will go through all the Cunningham recipes again -- but it would help if you would be willing to let me know which ones have errors.

Spelling and grammatical errors are still rife. I pick them up every time I visit Cookstr. You can't just run a 'blind' spell check because it often will not pick up the most common errors or omissions. It doesn't detract from the lovely recipes I have found here but it does make me question your claim to thorough proofreading. The idea of farming out your proofreading may not be such a daft idea?

Thank you so much for reaching out and for using Cookstr. We do, indeed, have human proofreaders look at every recipe that goes up on Cookstr -- well over 9,000 recipes! However, rather than farming out proofreading, we actually read every recipe internally -- and the Cookstr team is small. There are only a few of us, and thousands of recipes are being made available to our audience from cookbooks. While we do our best and hate finding typos, occasionally an error does turn up. It would be most helpful if you could let me know the recipe where you found the error, and I'll fix it right away.